Dearest neglected readers,
I hope this post finds you in good health and spirits! I am happy and healthy and have thus far spent my 2012 surrounded by loved ones. Al-hamdulilah. For the time being, I'm back in the US--the Midwest more specifically. I arrived back in late November, just in time for Thanksgiving, and I leave again in a matter of hours...but I'll get back to that later.
At the time that I left Thailand, my departure was temporary. My spare shoes were still sitting in front of the house, and my laundry left unlaundered. I even had a formal visa process underway with a legal firm in Bangkok. Within a few days of arriving to the US, however, my temporary departure turned into an indefinite return as Nezar learned his work contract would not be renewed for 2012. Given that I've been working on my Master's via correspondence I could still have returned to Thailand, but under drastically different circumstances. Ultimately, after much discussion, we made the decision that I would not return to Thailand, Nezar would ship my stuff to the US and we'd go from there. Though I'd never seen myself living in Thailand prior to the summer of 2010, I'd really grown to adore the country, and I was terribly sorry to leave. Given that I hadn't planned on leaving yet, it all felt a bit abrupt, without the proper emotional closure, if you will. Time marches on, however, and Thailand's not going anywhere right away. Perhaps the departure will be temporary after all.
But I'm still getting ahead of myself, as I last left you all in Burma, not Bangkok. Much to be said of the intervening months! Since the spring of 2011, the tentative plan post-Sangkhlaburi was to move to Mae Hong Son or Chiang Mai, somewhere where I could continue working and studying and also be closer to Nezar. We had been in a distance-relationship since the beginning, and were looking forward to spending time together in a less opportunistic fashion (a weekend here, a vacation there, etc.). The chance to teach in Yangon for a month then pushed back our reunion date, but my illness (chronicled in the last blog post) pushed it forward once again...the silver lining of Burma's brutal bacteria.
When I returned from Yangon, I spent a feverish night in Bangkok and visited the hospital to make sure the hotel clinic hadn't missed a more serious issue. For tourists looking for Thailand travel tips, I would highly recommend a visit to a private hospital as part of your itinerary. Got a tooth that needs fixing? Contemplating a general check-up? Visit the wondrous hospital-hotels! Even as an uninsured, underpaid American with dengue fever and mysterious bacterial infections, I was treated very well during all of my hospital visits. The rooms are five-star, and they are laughably cheaper than US health care is (laughable if you're on the right side of that comparison, at least). The one downside is that as fee-for-service hospitals, they're prone to offering services that aren't really necessary--extra tests, hospital stays for outpatient issues, etc. As long as you watch out for that, they are fantastic deals.
My test results came back inconclusive but relatively unconcerning, thankfully, so the same day I caught a flight to Chiang Mai. I had hoped to continue directly to Mae Hong Son, but the little charter plane that made the evening flights was out for repair. I was fortunate to crash with two free spirited friends that night--who were housesitting for a fellow expat--and the following morning I caught a flight into MHS, where Nezar met me at the airport...which was only about 5 blocks from our house, anyway.
Another big Thailand bonus is the cheap postal fares. It's common practice for people to ship motorbikes by mail...and apparently they'll even fill the gas tank for you! I had already sent most of my Sangkhlaburi stuff to Mae Hong Son by the time I arrived, so setting up house was a pretty quick process. We had a cute little place right on a main road. It was two levels, with real glass windows, air conditioning (luxury!) and sealed wooden floors upstairs, which meant we could mostly shut out the mosquitoes, frogs, bugs, lizards, etc. that I had dealt with in my last house (joy!).
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| Our little house, or 'baan rao,' in Mae Hong Son. This is before I moved in and added bamboo to the front fence-area and container gardens on the stairs...it needed a woman's touch. The building used to be an office, so the sign on the front door kindly advised all visitors to visit the new office location rather than barge into the house seeking assistance--which happened sometimes. |
The kitchen and bathroom were downstairs...and not protected by the nice glass windows and air conditioning of upstairs. We had a serious mouse problem for awhile. A neat trick Nezar discovered after trial-and-error: when using a no-kill cage, leave the mouse bait (crackers, etc.) inside of the wrapper but opened (to waft the smell out). The mice were too dextrous for the first trap settings he made, and carefully ate the food without detection. When the food was still wrapped, however, they had to pry at it and thus set the triggers off. We also had a tokay who used our bathroom as his bathroom, leaving us a stinky little gift on the stairs each night.
The long-standing mouse issue, along with a shared interest, got Nezar and I talking about getting a cat. We'd talked about that for practically as long as we'd talked about my moving in. Initially, I thought I'd take one of our office kittens from Sangkhlaburi. We ended up turning down that idea due to the hassle of bus travel with a kitten...though our later cat-travel-related issues make that seem trivial! So instead of going for a Sangkhlaburi cat, instead we found ourselves walking home one night with a pure white cat in a basket after Nezar picked him out on an impulse from a local shop. I insisted it was a bad idea, as did the cat, both of us complaining much of the way home. After several days of hiding and uninspired naming ideas, he finally started coming around and we came up with 'Kow Neow,' or 'sticky rice.' The name 'stuck' (hah) and I came to love him despite my better judgement.
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| Kow Neow, my 'wussy pussy,' comes up with brilliant places to hide when he feels threatened. We finally found him one evening clinging to the bottom of this motorbike helmet. After his shock wore off, he decided to stay in his newfound bed. |
Around the same time that Kow Neow arrived in our lives, my textbooks finally arrived from London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Several months prior, I had been accepted to the University of London External Programme, partnered with LSHTM, for an MSc. Public Health. Over the course of two to five years, I'll be able to get a Master's degree working from anywhere on my own schedule for a fraction of the US price. I was excited to revert back to studying after two years of teaching, but they unfortunately didn't do a good job rolling out the new textbooks and web conferencing software, so the first few months were spent in frustration. As I waited for books and got settled into a more domestic life (cooking dinners every evening, laundry, etc.), we looked for another friend for our lonely Kow Neow. We had always said we should get two cats rather than only one, and we got lucky when we visited the website for
SCAD, Soi Cats and Dogs, in Bangkok. They were
showcasing the most beautiful little Siamese kitten rescue, named Coco Chanel. Seeing as we lived in Siam, it was only appropriate to adopt a Siamese kitten.
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| Coco Chanel, or 'Coco,' soon after arrival to Mae Hong Son. We initially wanted to change her name to something Thai, but never came up with anything else we liked, so Coco she remains! |
Each year IRC, Nezar's employer, sent all the staff on a weekend
retreat, usually at a resort somewhere on the coast. To my delight,
Nezar made some contacts and arranged for me to come along and enjoy the
ride (without having to sit through any of the ice breakers or work-stuff, whoohoo!). The trip was in early October, and we would transit through Bangkok to get there. While in Bangkok, I met with the director at
SCAD and got to meet Coco. We arranged all the details and left her for
the weekend to receive the rest of her vaccinations. Then we traveled
down to Hua Hin, a popular beach town a few hours from Bangkok. While Nezar stayed pretty busy with work things, I had time to read and relax next to the beautiful wrap-around pool. The King of Thailand lives most of the time in a palace outside Hua Hin, so
it is not known for rowdy sex tourism and partying like other parts of
the coastline are. Downtown is small and quiet and relatively unremarkable, so I didn't bother to take the 10-minute trip into town from the resort...preferring to lounge at the pool, instead. The ocean was nowhere near as beautiful as in Krabi, as the Gulf of Thailand doesn't have the same blue waters as the Andaman Sea does. Regardless, it was a fantastic way to spend two days!
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| My favorite reading nook |
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| The best pool time was early morning, before all the other guests left the conference rooms. |
After returning to Bangkok we had to move Coco up to Mae Hong Son. Fortunately the airline accepted her as cargo for a marginal fee. The poor thing had to ride on the luggage carousel when she arrived to the airport. What's more, she had a 'cold,' and she kept sniffling and sneezing. We only learned through later experience that her 'cold' was actually a chronic virus, and she has continued to be a wheezy, congested cat (she even snores!). We spent one night with her and some friends in Chiang Mai, and then took another flight the following morning to return home. She's now well-versed in different modes of transportation: planes, taxis, song taews, motorbikes, tuk tuks, etc!
We were a little concerned about how the cats would get on together, but after a few days spent separately, they got to meet one another and quickly became best of friends. I could gag you with an innumerable number of cute pictures of them sleeping together, playing together, eating together, etc. but I'll spare you and post just a couple:
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| She may be small, but is she ever feisty! Here's a punch in the face. |
Once they were settled in, we settled down to a routine of relative unremarkability. Nezar would go to work each day, and I would settle in with my books and study one of my six classes, study Thai, visit the market, and make food. One of the things I loved about going to the market was running into Karenni women wearing the longneck brass coils and traditional dress. I felt so cool by association ('we shop at the same market!'). I also slowly but surely took up running as a hobby. We had a perfect hill, topped by a temple, three blocks from the house. A sharp hike up the pedestrian walkway and then a run down the car-access road equaled about 3 kilometers. Though I originally opposed the idea, we also got a cleaning lady to come twice a week. After just a few visits, I realized how great it was. Not only did I not have to scrub the bathroom, but it was a great way to practice my Thai and learn more about the culture. Pa'ow, or "Pi Pa'ow" as I called her ('pi' is a polite way to address someone older than you) was incredibly sweet and friendly, and she didn't speak any English. Our conversations were stilted, to say the least, but she was very patient and generous about my Thai skills, rephrasing questions or comments until she found combinations of words (or words and mimes) to make me comprehend.
As for Thai, though I'd been studying it since I arrived, I only really started making progress when I got to Mae Hong Son. I had learned to read and write in Sangkhlaburi, but I almost never spoke it, given that my office spoke only Mon and Burmese and English. Suddenly, in Mae Hong Son, the people I met day-to-day were all Thai speakers. I don't think I've ever written much about the Thai language here, but it's not the easiest language out there. There are 44 consonants alone, plus 28 vowel sounds plus 4 tone marks and some other characters. It doesn't even technically count as an alphabet, but rather an 'abudiga,' in which certain consonants inherently invoke certain vowel sounds and vowels are considered secondary characters to the consonants. In Thai, the vowels are written in front of, above, below, or to the right of the consonants...or even in a combination of these positions. Consonants are divided into three main classes: high, middle, and low. Each of these classes has inherent tone rules, but these rules change according to the four tone marks, which respond to each class of consonants differently. Many of the sounds and letters were originally borrowed from Sanskrit or Pali, and scads of words remain today with strange Sanskrit-influenced spellings that don't represent the actual pronunciation of the word (like many words in English, such as a 'cough=kof,' 'knight=nite' etc.). Despite the number of consonants characters, they only represent 21 unique consonant sounds, so many of the characters seem to exist solely to confound the reader. What's more, in speaking, there are a ludicrous number of words that sound the same to a non-native ear, but actually have different tones and different meanings. The most famous example is 'mai,' which, repeated in the correct order with five different tones, means 'New wood doesn't burn well, does it?'
All of the above to say, when I felt like I was actually making progress with this one-step-forward, two-steps-back language, it was a big deal!
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| My 10 baht tracing book, where I meticulously traced out and memorized the consonants. It was actually a very meditative process, which I have to admit I enjoyed thoroughly! |
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| A common sight in Thailand are these knee-high tables with Thai and English alphabet tops. Because there are so many consonants which represent the same sounds, they are distinguished from one another with a vocabulary representation for each (i.e., a word that is spelled with that consonant). So, the second through fifth letters on the table above would be something like: 'k' for egg, 'k' for bottle, 'k' for buffalo, 'k' for person, and 'k' for bell. Below the consonants are the Thai numbers, the squiggly lines to the right of our familiar numbers. |
Fortunately for all of you, Mae Hong Son has become one of my repeat blog-places, so I've already told you a lot about it. It didn't change much from my visit in December of the year before. We made trips to Baan Rak Thai (the cute little Chinese tea village), we went to the wats I've already posted pictures of, and we rode around on our black-and-orange Honda Click frequently. We made new acquaintances, like Pi Pa'ow and Dr. Yui, the local vet who took care of our cats and boarded them during our trips. We went to birthday parties, had people over for drinks, watched a lot of CNN International, and just, you know, lived. Two of Nezar's work colleagues became good friends, and in a surprising coincidence, one of them is Egyptian and lived next door to us. I kept insisting that both she and Nezar hang out their Egyptian flags and set up a backgammon table and sheesha on our outdoor chess table. Sadly, my dream of Mae Hong Son's Little Egypt never materialized. Sometimes we went to eat at Salween, the most reliable restaurant in town. More often, however, we ate at home. For cooking purposes, we had a rice cooker and a toaster oven. We had planned to get more supplies--like a gas tank and burner--but we kept getting by without them. It's amazing what you can do with a rice cooker once you start thinking about it: spaghetti, lentils, boiled potatoes, soup, sautes, pilafs, scrambled eggs and even French toast! All you really need is the heating implement anyway. and then it's just creative use of the 'on-off' lever. Most evenings we would eat dinner around the same time that one of our cable channels showed Top Chef. We were about 6 seasons behind the US, but if you've never seen it before, then it's all new anyway, right?
In late October, about three weeks after our Hua Hin trip, we celebrated our one-year anniversary. Between Mae Hong Son and Chiang Mai is a little town called Pai. It's a popular stop for backpackers, a Khaosan Road of Northern Thailand, more or less. (Khaosan Road is Bangkok's backpacker central...kind of a blend of Cancun's kitsch and lights with Venice Beach's hippies and egos.) We hopped on our bike and made the gorgeous three hour drive on a Friday afternoon. Many of the tourist t-shirts in Mae Hong Son advertise 1,864 curves between Chiang Mai and MHS. We would our way through about half of these curves, up and down the mountains, around and around. This being northern Thailand and a slightly higher elevation than the Sangkhlaburi-area, the scenery was less jungle and more wooded, with sections of the trip even feeling like a different country altogether.
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| Okay, so this still feels like Thailand. I made Nezar pull over for a shot of this verdant rice paddy at the foot of the mountains. |
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| He had to pull over for this one, too. A huge, gorgeous tree with a traditional spirit house at the base. Unfortunately no picture was going to be able to convey both adequately. Spirit houses are a common sight here in Thailand, and one of my very favorite Thai things. People usually put them in front of homes and businesses to provide 'homes' to spirits, either divine spirits or spirits of prior inhabitants of the space. I actually have my own spirit house in transit to the US now...( though I'd imagine the spirit's probably chosen to remain over in Thailand). When these houses are broken or replaced, the old houses have to be disposed of properly, leading to these odd piles of spirit house 'graveyards' under certain trees along the roadside. Ah, Thailand, how I'm going to miss you! |
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| On a later trip, we flew over that same road, which looked like a thin, curvy stream from the air |
When we arrived, Nezar had booked us at a beautiful boutique hotel called Rose of Pai. It had a little cafe out front (with a KILLER sandwich on the menu), and charming rooms facing the River Pai. It was extremely photogenic:
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| A gorgeous 'singha,' or Thai guardian lion in the cafe. 'Singha' is also the name of Thailand's most famous beer. If you want to set yourself apart as a truly in-the-know farang, don't pronounce it 'Sing-HA,' instead pronounce it 'sing.' This 'ha' is a tricky transliteration of an 'h' that's actually silent in Thai. |
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| The lovely hotel owner knew we were celebrating our anniversary, so she gave us a special tea time with cake on our patio. |
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| The most adorable coffee stirring spoon I've ever seen. I want a set so badly... |
Pai itself was also very photogenic. We were on the cusp of the tourism high season, so it was busier than Mae Hong Son, but not overwhelming. We spoiled ourselves on street snacks like mango-sticky rice and visited art galleries, street salesmen, used book stores, and coffee shops.
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| These little 'mailboxes' are a popular feature in touristy places. You can buy the postcard and the stamp from the shop, and they guarantee that they'll mail your postcard for you if you stick it into their little handcrafted mailbox. |
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| I'm such a sucker for these 'Thainglish' signs. Hehehe |
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| I've had that thought during Sangkhlaburi cheese-consumption droughts. |
A Canadian friend of a friend was in Pai at the same time we were, so we met up with him one evening. The poor guy had been in a very serious motorbike accident (he was hit by a car) several days before we saw him, but his effervescent optimism couldn't be kept down by a couple of big bandages and sore spots. He had made friends with a couple visiting from Australia, and together we made a plan to visit Tham Lod, a cave about an hour away. It was another beautiful drive, and a great chance to see a local place I'd heard about but hadn't seen yet.
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| Our ragtag motorbike gang on the way to Tham Lod. |
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| At the higher altitudes we hit sections of coniferous trees like this. Beautiful. |
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| There were a couple of these dramatic rainy season washouts along the road. Fortunately they were well-marked. |
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| In order to enter the cave, we had to take rafts to the main cavern, as well as lanterns and a guide. |
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| Pretty, though overall we didn't see very much of the cave due to some remaining rainy season flooding in several chambers. |
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| At the som tam stand for lunch. I always take my som tam 'jay,' without dried shrimp or crushed crabs. |
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| These orange buses ply the road between Mae Hong Son and Pai several times a day. They're notorious for nauseousness, due to all the curves. |
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| And another beautiful trip back into Pai for the night. |
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| I took over driving for about half of the trip back. It's so much fun once you start feeling comfortable! |
Our brief weekend in Pai was one of my favorite trips all year, despite the brevity. Finally, it wasn't a trip taken to renew a visa, or a rushed getaway from work. Instead, it was sheer celebration. Regardless, I still did enjoy our next trip to Bangkok a few weeks later...because, after all, how can you not enjoy Bangkok?! And all roads in Thailand lead to Bangkok eventually.
Thanks to the wonders of Facebook, Nezar had been in touch with an old college friend who he hadn't seen in over 15 years. When that friend needed a change of scenery, Nezar suggested that he come to stay with us for awhile (after getting my permission, of course). So in mid-November we headed south to meet him and greet him with a few days in the Big Mango (and to renew my visa yet again). At that time, as you may recall, Thailand's 'worst flooding in living memory' was bearing down hard on places like Ayutthaya and the outskirts of Bangkok. As we lived far from the central plains, the flooding had no significant impact on our day-to-day lives, although it was ironic to watch the harried BBC reporters belabor the flooding footage, reporting as if the whole of the country was hanging on to improvised floatation devices. All of this not to belittle the serious consequences the flooding DID have on a great number of people, including some of Nezar's friends and co-workers who lived outside of the central, protected zone of Bangkok. Flying down from Chiang Mai, the flooding was very apparent from the air. Great swathes of the neat arial patchwork of agriculture were stained with brown blotches, into which roads disappeared and houses appeared to float like small boats. There was some scary stuff out in that water, as well. Several crocodile farms (for leather production) lost control of their stock, and a herpetarium lost a number of poisonous green mamba snakes when its building was flooded. Central Bangkok retained its usual chaos amid the unusual chaos, however, despite daily warnings that 'this was it, the big surge comes tonight,' etc. One of our days in Bangkok we decided to rent bicycles--a fantastic, highly-recommended way to see this city--and we took them down by the Chao Phraya river for a closer look at all the hoopla.
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| It's common to see K. preceding a name in Thailand. It's short for Khun, which means 'you,' but is also a polite way to say Mr., Mrs. or Ms. |
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| I like this shot, but we both look awfully confused about where exactly we're going... |
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| Good, we've figured it out. Lead on! |
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| Sandbagged spirit house right next to the swollen Chao Phraya River |
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| Most of the shops around the city put up these funny cinderblock retaining walls (complete with sandbag stairs) to keep out potential flood waters. |
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| A lot of the streets within a few blocks of the river looked like this. Bangkok is very close to the Gulf of Thailand, so the tides actually affect the flow of the river at this height--pulling water in and pushing water out. The layout of some of the streets seemed to heighten this effect, so that when we were near the Grand Palace, for example, the water was rushing madly into the road from the narrow side alleys. |
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| These guys appeared to be posted on duty down next to the river, but how they were actually helping I can't say. |
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| And yet the beat goes on...yeah the beat goes on... |
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| Still adoring the features of my birthday present camera! I used the continuous shot, set on low light, and got this series of a tecraw sprike, essentially volleyball with your feet and a popular SE Asia sport. There are pick-up games every night in Queen Sirikit Park. |
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| We also went to Vertigo, a rooftop bar and restaurant in the Banyan Tree Hotel, in order to give David a good look at the whole of the city. |
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| The big green space in this shot is Lumpini Park, Bangkok's answer to Central Park. It's filled with pathways for running or biking and there are free exercise classes every day. It also has ponds filled with massive monitor lizards, which are fortunately quite harmless. |
I think I will always consider Bangkok a special, favorite place. Perhaps I felt so strongly about it because it was a big, brash loud city when I needed a big, brash loud city (Sangkhlaburi was my second year in a place without a single stoplight). It has everything a person could ever need and much, much more. It's easily navigable by public transportation. It's a higher standard of living for a lower overall cost than the US. It's a truly global city, drawing people from all corners of the earth. Need I go on? I have probably a thousand more photos of Bangkok, but they are currently in transit to the US with my external hard drive. I removed most of my Thailand pictures from my computer onto my hard drive when I went to Burma. Though things appeared to be easing up there at the time I packed my bags and left in August, things hadn't yet progressed to where they are today, and I didn't want to compromise anyone I was working with. Anyway, all of this to say that even though I'm trying to close the Thailand chapter, odds are good that I will be compelled to write one more blog post about Bangkok and Thailand just to get all of those pictures up and share their accompanying stories.
For now, however, I'll return us to Mae Hong Son via Chiang Mai, where we took a layover and showed David a few sights.
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| Though it's Thailand's second city, Chiang Mai's atmosphere is far removed from bustling Bangkok. |
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| Though I personally prefer Bangkok--the bigger the better--many people far prefer the tranquility of this smaller, older city. One arena in which Chiang Mai may have Bangkok beat, even in my books, is in healthy food (so many vegetarian options!) and relaxing tea houses. We stopped in for tea in this beautiful old mansion turned tea shop. |
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| It was only a few days until Loy Krathong, the holiday when miniature floating altars are set out on bodies of water with prayers. These are kratong made of bread, an environmentally- and fish-friendly alternative to Styrofoam. |
We flew out of Chiang Mai late in the afternoon on Kan Air. They're a small company running flights to small airports throughout Northern Thailand. The plane seats about 12 people, so it's essentially a 'minibus with wings.' There's no division between the pilots and passengers, and the broad, airy windows add to the interactive flying experience. Initially we had our doubts about Kan Air. I mean, it sounds like 'Con Air' and we'd seen their plane in pieces on the tarmac undergoing repairs. But this flight far exceeded expectations, and was far more fun than the equivalent flight on a regular plane.
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| Up we go! |
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| Farms on the outskirts of Mae Hong Son |
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| Coming in to land |
Soon Loy Krathong was officially upon us, and I enjoyed it much more here than I did in Sangkhlaburi. I think it was better here because most of the events were largely centered around one small place, rather than spread out around a large lake. There were also no children jumping into the water stealing donations here. Finally, tourist season had started, so everything felt so festive and fresh.
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| A common question I get about Thailand is whether or not Thai people actually eat pad Thai. Yes, it is a staple of pretty much every festival ever, and can always be obtained on the street--for MUCH cheaper than anywhere in the US. |
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| Lighting our krathongs |
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| And off they go! |
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| More homemade krathongs for sale, 20 baht (about 66 cents) |
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| 5 baht sushi |
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| Lanterns are a part of this holiday, as they are with many Thai holidays |
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| Spent kratongs started collecting into the corners of the pond, pushed there by the wind. |
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| Local muay thai fighters provide entertainment |
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| The most exhilarating part of the night--I love Thailand's safety codes--were these massive fireworks that were lit and exploded at ground level, showering everyone and everything in a huge parameter with golden light. |
A few weeks after Loy Krathong it was already time to leave for Thanksgiving in the US. Fortunately my schedule allowed us just enough time to go to wedding of one of Nezar's caseworkers in Chiang Mai. Her family is Indian-Thai and the wedding was held in a Sikh temple. Her family gave me a beautiful Indian suit to wear, and we enjoyed a nice ceremony and some tasty Indian food! Unfortunately, we had to leave before the reception, arriving to Bangkok late that same night.
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| We caught this silly shot at the airport while waiting for a taxi. |
The last day in Bangkok went far too quickly. We spent it strolling through Bangkok's latest mega-mall, Terminal 21. It's a themed mall, each floor representing a different city and store theme. The 1st floor was Rome, for example, with high-end designers; 2nd floor was Paris with independent local boutiques, and so on. The decorations in each floor mirrored the theme, London's floor even had security guards dressed as Buckingham Palace's Royal Guard. My personal favorite feature, however, were the Japanese-style toilets in each themed bathroom. These toilets actually came with instructions and remote controls! The remote controls controlled the angle of the bidet stream, the temperature, and even had a butt blow dryer...wow. I took pictures, but I seem to have lost them somewhere along the way...perhaps you're not too upset? Generally one thing that struck me upon my return to the US is how old and ugly our infrastructure is. Thailand and South Korea (my transit point) both have such new and sleek systems that flying into O'Hare was a bit of an unpleasant shock. If only we could get our country to nation-build here, right?
Oh my, this post is running oh-so-long, but there's just so much to say and show! By now I suppose I should get to my title, Bangkok to Bogota...how'd that happen? Well, I saw a posting on my grad school web board for a research assistant in Colombia. I was interested, but I wasn't sure how seriously I felt about applying. After all, I was finally starting to get Thai and hoping to find a position somewhere on the border. After Nezar found out his contract was wrapping, however, I thought I ought to explore the option. In mid-December I received the happy news that they would take me on as a Field Assistant in February! I will be working, once again, in a small jungle town about 8 hours from the capital city, in an area that has previously faced violence and hosts a diverse community of ethnic minority groups. Sounds familiar, no? We will be focusing on the ecology of malaria in three indigenous Amazonian tribes. The current plan is to stay until late May, when I'll return to the US to take my finals for this year's six course modules.
I am so excited to go, but it's complicated. Suddenly Nezar and I are in a long-distance relationship again. Fortunately, we just finished a fun and relaxing month together in the US. He and our two cats arrived to the US on Jan. 1, and I picked him up in Chicago. We spent a couple of days exploring (as it was his first time to the Midwest), and then we headed south to St. Louis. My family has had a condo in the Lake of the Ozarks since I was a child, and it's usually empty this time of year. It's three hours from St. Louis and nestled right on one of the coves of the Lake. We settled in down there for the month, where I cracked into all of my books and he followed up job leads. We joined the YMCA's gym, hiked, and watched far too much Law & Order. It was perfect. Now he's off to Dubai, where he'll stay with family and keep job hunting. It's hard to imagine more divergent places in the world: cosmopolitan, wealthy Arab aridity vs. rural, impoverished Amazonian humidity. I keep gambling that one of these times I'll find a position somewhere in a city. But until then, I have a new city to explore on breaks, and a new country to add to my list!
Enough for now, I've gone on too long anyway and I leave in a matter of hours--about 55 to be exact. I haven't packed a shred of clothing yet! A huge thank you to my wonderful, supportive parents who have done so much for Nezar and me over the last few months. Wish me safe travels, and hope to update you from South America soon!
ประเทศไทย,ไม่มีวันลืมเธอ!
